Yesterday the parents and I went to “Where the Wild Things Are” which we all had very mixed feelings about, then I made dinner, which we had far less mixed feelings about. I saw this squash, chorizo, hazelnut pasta dish a good long while ago and added it to the colossal virtual folder of recipes, but forgot all about it until we went to Cafe Vicino in Boise and they had squash and walnut fettucini. The fettucini sounded marvy, but I opted for the lamb shank instead, promising myself I’d make roasted squash pasta on my own. So I returned to Camero’s blog to get the recipe, and I saw a recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies as well. Squash dinner, squash dessert, why not really. So I went to the local Co-op (which I have missed so) list in hand- only to find there was a city-wide hazelnut famine, due to a recall or something of the likes. So I got walnuts instead.

After the movie we went home and I began butchering the butternut squash procured by Momma for the meal. It was horribly difficult. Squashes (squashi?) are not, I repeat not, easy to dice, as the recipe called for. Half an hour and two sore and tired little hands later, I had a baking sheet loaded with diced and olive oil-ed squash. While the squash roasted I prepared the sage, chorizo, and walnuts. I made “crispy sage” a la Jakarta’s Social House’s chef Aldo. (I went to an Italian cooking demo… which I never blogged… Oops.) Basically hot olive oil, drop sage in, wait until its crispy, take it out. Then de-case the chorizo, add it to the pan, cook it, crumble up the sage and add it back, push all of that to one side of the pan, drop the walnuts in the now free side, let them roast a little, mix it all up. And make pasta at the same time. In other words, dash around like a fool trying to boil pasta and smash walnuts simultaneously. The butter and lemon on the pasta turned out to be key, the lemon really made the dish in an odd way. After pasta’s done, squash is roasty, chorizo and co. is cooked, mix together, yum.

“Mom, my squash is not golden.” Fix: Top rack, broil for the last minute or so. Voila, golden.

Now rewind, vzzzzzzzzz, before the movie, I made the pumpkin chocolate cookie dough and stuck it in the fridge. Which I recommend (the fridge part) because otherwise it’d be a really sticky dough, and you have to mash the dough balls flat before baking. But the cookies were–are, I’m eating one now–delicious. Cakey, due to the the pureed pumpkin I believe. And you can tell yourself they’re healthy, they have pumpkin after all. And I did half-and-half white and whole wheat flour, another way to call them healthy energy snicky snacks rather than cookies.

Pumpkin cookies, soy milk, and blogs, these are a few of my favorite things.

[…] that’s her blog. How rad!?) makes tons and tons of tasty tasty things. She is from whence roasted squash and chorizo pasta came. Anyway. Chickpea and bread soup! (I just realized why I love chickpeas so much. Just say the […]